How to read and say Lebanese Arabic
Letters, sounds and stress from Wikivoyage's Lebanese Arabic phrasebook. Then hear the phrases and practice them, free.
▶ Practice Lebanese Arabic phrasesFor some Arabic sounds, there is no easy transliteration (and no single agreed transliteration). The pronunciation guide shown below is case-sensitive; for example, 'th' is a different sound to 'Th' and 'TH'. Note that there is no such thing as a diphthong in Arabic; instead, some consonants map to English diphthongs. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vowels
- a
- like 'a' in "apple"
- i
- like 'ee' in "cheese"
- u
- like 'oo' in "too"
- o
- like 'o' in "more"
- e
- like 'e' in "bed"
- é
- like 'ai' in "claire"
Easy Consonants
- b
- like 'b' in "bed"
- t
- like 't' in "top"
- j
- like 's' in "pleasure"
- kh
- like 'ch' in Scottish "loch" (or German "nach")
- d
- like 'd' in "mad"
- r
- like 'r' in "row"
- z
- like 'z' in "haze"
- s
- like 's' in "sing"
- sh
- like 'sh' in "sheep"
- f
- like 'f' in "fun"
- k
- like 'k' in "kitten"
- l
- like 'l' in "love"
- m
- like 'm' in "mother"
- n
- like 'n' in "nice"
- h
- like 'h' in "help"
- w
- like 'w' in "weight"
- y
- like 'y' in "yes"
Difficult Consonants
The following 3 consonants are pronounced by rounding the mouth as you say them. You can get an approximate effect by accentuating them in the following pronunciations.
- S
- like 's' in "sorry"
- D
- like 'd' in "dot"
- T
- like 't' in "taught"
The following consonant is almost never pronounced in the Lebanese Arabic dialect but replaced with a glottal stop, which can also be represented by an apostrophe.
- q
- in regular Arabic : like 'c' in "call" (with the back of the throat)
- gh
- like a French or German letter "r"
The following consonant (called "ha", which will be represented by the number 7), is similar to English "h" but stronger. It is pronounced deep in the throat, like the sound you make when breathing on a pair of glasses to clean them.
- 7
- a little like a mixture of "h" and "kh"
- 2
- a glottal stop (IPA: ʔ), or the constriction of the throat as between the syllables uh-oh, but in Arabic this is often found in strange places such as the beginning of a word. Known in Arabic as hamza ء
The following consonant (called "ayn", which will be represented by the number 3), is very difficult to say. In English, the only time you will use the throat muscles used to say this letter is when you are throwing up; if that's how it feels, you're probably doing it right.
- 3
- like the sound represented by "aargh"